German Workers Educational Association

The German Workers Educational Association was a socialist political party in Prussia that existed from 1840 to 1917, founded by Karl Schapper as a mass organization of the Communist League. The party would be led by Schapper's faction of the league, which was in opposition to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany. The parties disagreed on religious policy, with the GWEA supporting religious pluralism instead of secularism, which the Social Democrats had adopted. The party operated in exile in London, and it was disbanded in 1917 when the United Kingdom interned the Germans in the British isles.